Sunday, October 11, 2015

A clear midnight




This is thy hour O soul, thy free flight into the wordless,
Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,
Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best,
Night, sleep, death and the stars.





~ Walt Whitman





Friday, October 9, 2015

the wild earth







Even through these trivial crowded days,
I never lose sight of the wild earth on which I live,
of the ravishing perfection of its beauty.
I stand before infinity and look out over a virgin wilderness.

The potential for reproducing fragments
of this in a form worthy of it are endless.



~ Harlan Hubbard
from his journal, January 15, 1987




Wednesday, October 7, 2015

silent journal







Inaudible consonant inaudible vowel 
The word continues to fall 
in splendor around us 
Window half shadow window half moon 
back yard like a book of snow 
That holds nothing and that nothing holds 
Immaculate text 
not too prescient not too true



~ Charles Wright
from Xionia

forgetting words







A water egret planes down like a page of blank paper
Toward the edge of the noon sky.
Let me, like him, find an island of white reeds
To settle down on, under the wind, forgetting words.



~ Charles Wright
 from T’ang Notebook,
 The Other Side of the River: Poems


Tuesday, October 6, 2015

it is










Almost noon, the meadow 
Waiting for someone to change it into an other. Not me. 
The horses, Monte and Littlefoot, 
Like it the way it is. 
And this morning, so do I.




~ Charles Wright
from Lightfoot


Sunday, October 4, 2015

the night watch







Outdoors, like a false morning,
 Fog washes the pine trees. It 
 Shoulders against the windows,
 Spreading across their surface
 On its way upward. In this 
 Moment between sleep and thought 

 This holding back, I can hear 
 The fog start to rise, the slow 
 Memory of an ocean, 

 And I, like a ship, begin 
 To stir, to lurch in its swell, 
 And to move outward, beyond 

 The steel jetty, the lighthouse, 
 The red-flagged channel buoys,
 --Beyond, at last, sleep even--

 Into a deeper water,
 Pale, oracular, its waves
 Motionless, seagulls absent. 




~ Charles Wright
art by andrew wyeth




wind










There is an otherness inside us 
We never touch, 
no matter how far down our hands reach. 
It is the past, 
with its good looks and Anytime, Anywhere ... 
Our prayers go out to it, our arms go out to it 
Year after year, 
But who can ever remember enough?

...

The life of this world is wind 
Windblown we come, and windblown we go away. 
All that we look on is windfall. 
All we remember is wind.




~ Charles Wright
from The Southern Cross


Saturday, October 3, 2015

open







What I want is to open up. I want to know what's inside me. I want everybody to open up. I'm like an imbecile with a can-opener in his hand, wondering where to begin - to open up the earth. I know that underneath the mess everything is marvelous. I'm sure of it.

I know it because I feel so marvelous myself most of the time. And when I feel that way everybody seems marvelous … everybody and everything … even pebbles and pieces of cardboard … a match stick lying in the gutter . . . anything . . . a goat's beard, if you like. That's what I want to write about … and then we're all going to see clearly, see what a staggering, wonderful, beautiful world it is.




~ Henry Miller
from Sexus


Wednesday, September 23, 2015

the call away









A cold wind flows over the cornfields;
Fleets of blackbirds ride that ocean.
I want to be out of here, go out,
Outdoors, anywhere in wind.

My back against a shed wall, I settle
Down where no one can find me.
I stare out at the box-elder leaves
Moving frond-like in that mysterious water.

What is it that I want? Not money,
Not a large desk, not a house with ten rooms.
This is what I want to do: to sit here,
To take no part, to be called away by wind.

I want to go the new way, build a shack
With one door, sit against the door frame.
After twenty years, you will see on my face
The same expression you see in the grass.




~ Robert Bly 
from Like the New Moon, I Will Live My Life
art by van gogh


Tuesday, September 8, 2015

a single tree












Not so much time itself
as the changes, 
the constant shifting 
and metamorphosing
of things into 
their opposites,
or, more likely, diminished versions
of themselves.

The cat, grown old,
stumbles about the room,
and doesn't remember the year
she leapt from sill to sill
taking the lace curtains
down as she went.

And the tree,
a blackened scar,
opening its side to weather
minus its most stately branch,
long since taken off
by wind, or lightning,
or something obsessed
with symmetry --
does it recall the winter it stood
alone, unyielding,
against the hammering gale?
Or its abundant leafiness in spring,
its green proclamation
of all that continues
unabated in this world.




~ Dorothy Walters
from Marrow of Flame



Wednesday, September 2, 2015

The mountains stood in haze






The mountains stood in haze,
The valleys stopped below,
And went or waited as they liked
The river and the sky.

At leisure was the sun.
His interests of fire
A little from remark withdrawn.
The twilight spoke the spire.

So soft upon the scene
The act of evening fell
We felt how neighborly a thing
Was the invisible.




~ Emily Dickinson

Saturday, August 29, 2015

the nature of consciousness









~ Robert Spira

Friday, August 28, 2015

something else










Whatever it is hangs over us,
wants us to keep on gliding forward,
as if a compass nestled in the heart,
as if a hidden magnet were always calling to
the bits of iron which swim in the blood,
or a boat was being drawn ahead
by a canal-man, with his steady line and
unwavering eye,
not asking why, just doing it,
even on the days we awaken
amidst the ruins of the spirit,
and have nothing to offer,
except a longing for the smell of hyacinths
and something else we can't fully recall.




~ Dorothy Walters
from Marrow of Flame


who






Whoever went in
naked to the core.

Whoever cast aside
all the armor.
all the fastenings.

Who could breathe air thin as flame.

Drink water pressed from blossoms,
rose petals
or violets.

Whoever stayed in that
darkness so dark
it became a circle of seeing.

Who could hear
the silent flute note
of the stilled wind,
hold rock turning to light.




~ Dorothy Walters
from Marrow of Flame



Sunday, August 2, 2015

Uzayr


  




The sons of Uzayr, were looking for their father.

They have grown old, and their father
has miraculously grown young!

They meet him and ask, "Pardon us, sir,
but have you seen Uzayr?  We hear

that he's supposed to be coming along
this road today."  "Yes," says Uzayr,

"he's right behind me."  One of his sons
replies, "That's good news."  The other

falls on the ground.  He has recognized
his father.  "What do you mean news?

We're already inside the sweetness
of his presence."   To the mind

there is such a thing as news, whereas
to inner knowing , it's all in the middle

of its happening.  To doubters, this is
a pain.  To believers, it's gospel.

To the lover and the visionary
it's life as it's being lived.



~ Rumi
Coleman Barks translation